Farmer, Flyer, Futurist: the Memoirs of Admiral Owen Wesley Siler, Commandant of the United States Coast Guard: Edited by Marsha Siler Antista

By Owen Wesley Siler

The course of Owen Wesley Siler’s life forever changed when he enlisted in the United States Coast Guard (USCG) in 1941. After he entered the Coast Guard Academy, Siler’s path soon led him to serve in the Second World War and and after the war, he rose to the rank of admiral and commandant of the USCG.

Posthumously shared in Admiral Siler’s words and edited by his daughter, this memoir recounts a young man’s journey of dedication and focus as he traveled from a farm in California to the Coast Guard academy, through the turmoil of the Second World War, and finally into thirty-five years of dedicated service. In his fascinating narrative, Admiral Siler details how he honed his lifelong interest in aviation into an occupation that expanded the lifesaving capabilities of the Coast Guard search and rescue efforts from US coasts to international waters, and how as commandant, he set new precedents that transformed future operations of the Coast Guard.

Farmer, Flyer, Futurist offers unique insight into a military man’s role with the United States Coast Guard during a critical time in history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Sep 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781480878242

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Copyright © 2019 Owen Wesley Siler.

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This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-7823-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-7822-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-7824-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019908324

Archway Publishing rev. date: 9/9/2019

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction by Owen Wesley Siler

A New Direction for Life

My Early Life

The Academy

The Academy After the War Began

War in the Pacific

The War’s End

I Joined the Coast Guard

Flight Training

Port Angeles

Hawaiian Duty

Headquarter Duty as an Aide

Corpus Christi

Alaska

Miami

National War College

Return to Headquarters

New Admiral in St. Louis

Commandant

In Summary/Epilogue

USCG Official Biography

Preface

For two years, my father, Owen Wesley Siler, sat in his studio office above his garage in Savannah, Georgia, typing his memories on his word processor (before he owned a computer).

I have taken the liberty of transcribing his memories into this manuscript. The vast majority of the text is from his original manuscript with minor edits from me.

Dad was a wonderful father and truly dedicated to the United States Coast Guard. He could be intimidating when he was angry (all of 6’4") but in general, he was thoughtful, kind, and insightful. He and my mother, Bette Lilian Walford Siler, were dedicated to the Coast Guard and were partners in their journey through life.

Owen Siler was called Wes by family members and Si by USCG academy cadet friends. Dad was never really a farmer; his father, Walter Orlando Siler, had groves of fruit trees, livestock and other ways to supplement his income for his family. Dad did help with many of these activities, thus, the farmer verbiage. Dad was a flyer and was able to see ways for the Coast Guard to lead the way for women and others to advance within the United States military services.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Scott Price, USCG Chief Historian, for his assistance in gathering information for this book and thanks to Marlane Castellanos and Nessie Pruden Siler for their editing and feedback during the preparation of this manuscript.

Marsha Siler Antista

Tallahassee, Florida

May, 2019

Introduction

by Owen Wesley Siler

I have no idea who will read this, if anyone. I would like my children to know a little more about my life, just because I think it may be interesting. It was to me. It has been a good life, and it is not something I particularly expected of myself or the environment in which I grew up. If this is boring, quit reading and throw it in the trash.

A New Direction for Life

T he call came in the morning, I believe it was a Sunday, after my wife Bette and I had returned from a brief trip to Florida for a short vacation to visit our daughter Marsha, who was attending the University of Florida in Gainesville, and to rest and relax at the beach. I was the Coast Guard district commander of the Rivers District of the Coast Guard, the Second District, headquartered in Saint Louis, Missouri.

I knew that the time had come, or was close, when a new commandant of the Coast Guard was to be selected, but I had no concerns about it, because I was seven years junior to the officer who was in the position. It sounds like eight because my Academy class was 1944 while the Commandant’s class was 1936, but our class was commissioned early due to the World War II shortening of the courses at the Academy.

I was actually commissioned in June, 1943. Chet Bender, the admiral in command of the Coast Guard, was on the phone, and told me he wanted me to come to Washington to be interviewed by the Secretary of Transportation regarding my being Chet’s replacement.

I hung up the phone a little in shock. I told Bette what the subject was, and her response was I’m not sure I want you to do that. Her meaning was ok take the position, not just go to Washington. I thought about the others who might be in the running at the time, and replied, I don’t think that there is a chance that I would be selected. There were some very good officers who were available and I think I might be the most junior of any group asked to see Mr. Brinegar (the Secretary of Transportation). I really think that if it means anything, it might be that I would be considered sooner for one of the Area commands. Those two commands were in New York, which I knew little about, and in San Francisco, which I knew more about, having served in four of the districts that made up the area. That thought convinced Bette that at least I should go for the interview. The idea of living in the lovely quarters at Yerba Buena Island in the middle span of the San Francisco Bridge was too much to hold us back.

A few days later, I was on a plane headed for Washington. I planned to spend the evening with our son, Gregory and his then wife Holly, in one of the suburbs, and go to Coast Guard Headquarters the following morning. When I arrived in Washington, however, my bag did not. I made it a practice always to travel in uniform, and I had worn an older uniform and packed my newest and best looking suit of blues. Now I did not have that sharp uniform—only a wrinkled, sat out suit.

The evening was not as pleasant as it might have been while I wondered whether or when my suitcase might catch up with me. I pressed some of the wrinkles out of my uniform, but it wasn’t the one I had wanted to wear. I went to bed, but didn’t sleep until 2 A.M. when the bag was delivered by Eastern Airlines.

On my arrival at Coast Guard Headquarters, wearing the fresh uniform, where I knew the building well, having supervised the move into that location only a couple of years ago, I would visit with Chet Bender; the Vice Commandant, my good friend and former immediate supervisor, Tom Sargent; before going to see the Secretary of Transportation. They suggested some of the questions that either Mr. Brinegar or the Deputy Secretary, John Barnum, might ask, but few were of much help when I actually met first with Mr. Barnum and Secretary Brinegar later in the day.

Some of the things they did ask, and some they did not, rather surprised me. I really wasn’t prepared to think as the commandant at that point. I remember well the question, What characteristics would you be looking for in a vice commandant? My answer was The same as you would look for in a commandant. The two must work as a team and the vice commandant must be the alter ego of the commandant. He must be able to fill in, in cases of illness, or any such problems. He must be able to work with the commandant and, therefore, should be very close personally to the commandant.

I believe they asked if I had any individual in mind, but again, I hadn’t progressed that far in my thinking. I could only give abstract thoughts. They did not ask if I had any new programs that I wanted the Coast Guard to undertake, and if they had, I would not have suggested any completely new departures. I did state that I believed that a new commandant must carry on the level-headed approaches that were the style of the Coast Guard in the past.

I returned to Saint Louis, not knowing any more about my future than I had before. I knew that my assignment to the Second District must be drawing to a close. I had been there for three years, and at least one of the captains who worked with me told me years later that he had thought that if I spent that long in the district, I must be at the end of my road in the service. I still had duties to perform, however, and the next week I was ordered back to Washington to serve on a board to select captains for rear admiral. This was expected to last for a full week, and since we had both friends and family in the Washington area, I took Bette with me, and we stayed in Army quarters in Fort Myer.

It was either Tuesday or Wednesday of our deliberations, when a messenger came to the boardroom with a message for Ed Perry, who was Commander of the Eighth District, just down the river, for the lower part of the Mississippi and most of the Gulf of Mexico. He had been chief of staff when I departed Headquarters three years earlier. I had been his deputy when I was detached. The message was that the Secretary wanted to see him; I believe it was in the mid-afternoon. I felt certain that Ed had been one of the rear admirals who had been ordered in to be interviewed, and assumed that this notification was that he was to be the new commandant. I had mixed emotions, I felt that the pressure was off, that I would not make Bette have those questionable feelings, and I knew Ed had all the right qualities. Naturally, when I had been called in, I had hoped that I would be promoted but if it wasn’t to be, so be it.

Then, an hour or so later, a messenger came to tell me that the Secretary wanted to see me at 5 P.M. We would have quit our deliberations by that time, so it created no problem, but I had to let Bette, over at Fort Myer, know that I wouldn’t be coming back when we stopped our work for the day. So I called her and she told me that we were going to get together with Lieutenant General and Mrs. Fred Kornett, Chief of Ordnance for the Army, after I returned, but it would be in our quarters. I had known that the Kornetts when he was Chief of Aviation Systems for the Army, with his offices just a couple of blocks from mine. The Army provided me a lot of transportation in small army planes over the huge area of the Second Coast Guard District.

After we closed for the day, I went to the Commandant’s office and told Chet that I was to go up at five, but almost immediately, a message came to that office from the Secretary that he would not be able to see me until six. I called Bette again, and twiddled my thumbs for an additional hour. At six, I went to the eighth floor, and was told that I was to be the commandant. I then told them, that I thought about it more, and the person who should be vice commandant was Ed Perry. He’d been two years ahead of me at the Academy, and I had known him and his wife since those days. He had an excellent reputation for being an officer who made the right decisions, and I couldn’t think of anyone with whom I could work any better. The Secretary and the Deputy agreed with my selection, and I went on to my business with the board for the next few days.

I obviously told Bette of my selection, we told our children, but the official announcement would not come until the White House announced that President Nixon had sent to the Senate Commerce Committee for confirmation of the nomination of Rear Admiral Owen W. Siler to be Commandant. You just never knew how long the White House would take! There were two other persons who knew about the nomination that same night. We couldn’t keep our lips buttoned completely with the Kornetts that night. Soon an Army general and his wife knew I was the nominee before I told anyone else in the Coast Guard.

The next day I sought a quiet place and time to tell Ed Perry that I’d been told I would be the new Commandant and that I would like him to be my Vice Commandant. He replied that if this action suggested was being directed by the Secretary, he wanted nothing to do with it. I replied, No, you’re my choice. He immediately agreed to be the Vice Commandant. This is noteworthy, because, as I stated before, he was two years ahead of me at the Academy.

When I made my first cruise as a cadet, I served as the cadet officer of the deck and the watch in port. I was doing the work of a seaman of the watch. I’d not worked directly with him as an officer, until he was a rear admiral. He became the chief of staff shortly before I put on my stripes as a rear admiral and left Headquarters. I was his deputy at that time. It was probably harder for his wife to accept the fact that Ed was to be junior to me. In fact, several years later, she admitted it to Bette. However, it was an unusual situation for the Coast Guard. I had jumped over something like 23 senior officers to move into the position and certainly some of them resented it.

Ed and I conferred next on where we would locate some of the other flag officers of the Coast Guard, and who should serve as the two vice admirals in the Areas. We had no problem with our decision, V. F. Rea in New York and J.J. McClelland in San Francisco. Our reasoning was that Bill had a great deal of Merchant Marine supervision and was proficient in relationships and New York was the location of the American Bureau of Shipping, and the corporate offices of several lines. Joe, on the other hand, although he had been Chief of Operations in New York, was from Seattle, had served in several vessels on the West Coast, and seemed ideally suited for San Francisco. As chief of staff, we chose Ed Scheiderer, a very well-qualified admiral, who would have served very well anywhere, in all probability, but his forte was definitely administration.

A few weeks later, the announcement was made by the White House, and the pressure of saying to my friends and fellow workers in St. Louis that I didn’t know who would be the next Commandant and that I had no idea what my next assignment would be, was over. I was ordered to Washington for a series of briefings on where the developments had proceeded in the years I had been out of Headquarters, and given some highly classified information on some activities that impacted the Coast Guard.

This coincided with my appearance before the Senate Commerce Committee to have my confirmation hearing, along with the other promotions involved in this change of command of the Service. They were not difficult hearings, especially since Senator Warren Magnuson of Washington was the chairman of the committee at that time, and he had noted that I was born in Seattle. He always liked to greet me with, It’s a pleasure to welcome my fellow Washingtonian to this hearing, and I never mentioned the fact I left for California at the age of six months.

Those couple of weeks in January, 1974 brought Bette and me probably the biggest changes in our lives, and in the direction of our thinking, that could have been made. Neither of us had had that position as a definite goal in life. We were ambitious, and tried to do the right thing as it occurred to us, but this was unthinkable, until now. We had to think it through again. Bette put it into words, as she said, It would be work, but we will have fun, together.

My Early Life

I was born on a snowy day in January, 1922, in Seattle, Washington, my parents told me. They took a photograph of the house at 3237 Thirty-fifth Avenue South, and my mother could recite that address anytime we asked her to until the time of her death. She gave it in a singsong effect, and I was always amused at how she said it. I was born at home, so now I have the address on my birth certificate. I guess Mother didn’t like hospitals, or they were just too expensive when the doctors would make home deliveries, because I know that my sister was born at home, and I would guess my brothers were as well.

I was the second child born in our family. Walter Orlando, Junior had been born in Atascadero, California nearly two years earlier. My father had been in the accounting department for Atascadero Colony, when he observed the illegal processes being utilized to sell the land of the Colony, and he left to go to Seattle to teach in a business college. The head of the company promoting the Atascadero Colony later served time in prison for using the mails to defraud.

As I stated earlier, we left Seattle when I was approximately six months old, to seek the warmer climes of California again. This time it was another business college in Los Angeles, but on the way south, my parents stopped in Santa Maria, California, where my father applied for a position in the business department of the local high school. We moved north from Los Angeles to Santa Maria in time for the next school year. I guess that was September, 1922.

The first place we lived was on South Broadway, only a few doors from the high school. I’d forgotten that we lived there, until I returned to Santa Maria with Bette, to spend a little time with members of my high school class and have a mini-reunion in the summer of 1992. At that time, Katherine Preisker reminded me that we had once been neighbors, since she had lived in a mansion a few houses further south. (Her father was chairman of the County Board of Supervisors as long as I could remember).

The first house I had any memory of was on South Pine Street. We were only a short distance from the Santa Maria Valley Railroad, and I remember Mother putting straight pins on the tracks, in order that they would be rolled into tiny knives or two could make scissors by the weight of a passing locomotive.

We lived there when a hernia that I had had for some time needed to be repaired. It had been giving me trouble for some time. My parents had taken their two little boys to Missouri to visit my father’s old home at Weston, perhaps on the way to Santa Maria from Los Angeles. Mother told me that the hernia had started to strangulate. I must have been screaming up a fit. We took the train to head for either St. Joseph or Kansas City, the nearest place with a fully equipped hospital, I don’t know which. The herniated area eased, I stopped screaming and went to sleep, and we returned to Weston without the operation then.

I remember that people (who know who they were) brought me gifts to keep me happy while I was in the hospital. I particularly remember a balloon in the shape of a rooster, which had a squeaker valve in the stem, and was supposed to sound like a chicken. When I came home from the hospital, it was in the backseat of the 1922 Dodge sedan we had at the time. The stretcher boards were used to carry me to the car and into the house. The boards, I presume, were nailed together. I was only three when this took place. My younger brother was born while we lived there.

My father had been raised in his younger years on a large farm in Missouri. He was convinced that the discipline of caring for the farm animals and working the soil was beneficial to young people. To move in this direction, my parents rented two country homes, both with sufficient space to have orchards, and to raise some chickens and other farm animals.

First we rented a place very near where the Santa Maria Golf and Country Club was in later years. Then we moved about a mile closer to town. I don’t know quite why. We remained in the latter home for several years. My older brother, Walt, was always known as (Junior) in those days, and I and perhaps some neighborhood boys used to roll up our blue jeans, to the approximate length of football pants, and play football in among the trees in the orchard. When we were sweating from our exertions, and rolling in the cultivated soil between trees, we became walking dirt piles!

At one time, the septic tank failed, and a new cesspool had to be excavated, near the house. The removed earth became a play area where my brothers and I dug roads, built mud houses, and spent hours developing the real estate in miniature. This activity led my parents to look for toy autos, trucks, and road equipment for gift material over many years. I had a cast iron cement mixer that was around the house, although it was a different house, even when I went off to the Coast Guard Academy years later.

The property here had an undeveloped area just to the north, along the highway. It was an ideal location for young boys to play Indian games. There were sand dunes covered with white wild bush lupine, and other brush, which made great areas to pretend the Indians or bad men were hiding. Off to the east there was a field which was cultivated by a neighbor, Mr. Dale Porto. It had oats and beans in it during a part of the year. At other times it was just a big open space. The main highway running north and south along the California coast, Highway 101, was our front street.

To the south there was a more undeveloped area, then a shotgun range where the sharpshooters from the town practiced skeet, and then an auto court in a grove of eucalyptus trees. It was a good place for our family to grow up. We had a cow for a good part of the time we lived here, and either my brother or my mother would milk the cow. I would bring the cow in from the place where we had staked her to graze, however, and this led to an interesting incident.

The cow had been staked out early in the morning, before my father and us boys had to go to school. She had been there all day, enjoying the lush green grass at the edge of the field which was cultivated. I was sent out to bring the cow in to be milked, and went out, a distance of probably an eighth to a quarter of a mile. When I arrived, the cow was at the far end of the circle of grass available to her, and still was pulling up grass. I pulled up the steel rod holding her, and tugged on the chain. This brought no response at the other end.

I then flipped the chain, to give it a standing wave. The wave reached Bossie’s head, and she bobbed her head as she had to turn to look at me. Then she started running toward me, and I turned to run away as fast as I could toward home with the cow approaching rapidly. I shouted at the top of my lungs, Mother! Mother! since she was standing at the fence which bordered our property, and I hoped she would have some inspiration about what to do about a cow chasing her son. I dropped to a dispirited walk, however, when Bossie passed me still at a good speed, and headed for her enclosed pen, where she could have her first drink of water for the day! I always wished that someone had timed me for a short dash, say 50 or 100 yards. I believe I must set some kind of record for that distance.

My father always wanted to own his own property, and therefore he bought land near where we had lived and built a house in approximately 1932. Prices were right at this time, and labor was cheap. He bought eight acres along the same highway, but two acres farther south. Then he planted an orchard, berries, grapes, and contracted for construction of a house big enough for the family of six, with a few things that my parents thought of as luxuries at the time. The house had a basement under part of the house, an unheard of item in most houses in that part of California.

We had a fireplace as the only installed heating. It was all stucco on the exterior, and plaster walls throughout the inside. We had two bathrooms which was progress in those days. The garage was a separate structure, and it had plenty of space for storage for poultry and cow feed. My father acted as the contractor of the construction, and did some of the work on the house himself.

The only bad thing about this move was that my parents had considered buying the house we had previously lived in, instead of striking out in a new area, and then decided a new place was better. At the time we moved, oil was discovered on the property that we had been living on, and our neighbor, Mr. Dale Porto, the Italian farmer was a rich man. His daughters, who had once been not too popular, were now in great demand for dates because they would provide their own wheels, big Buicks or convertibles. Another neighbor, not too far away, who was the art teacher in the high school, had enough oil income that the family moved after few years to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to spend the rest of their days and just enjoying painting, and the good life. Our new location was put under an oil lease, but the field apparently didn’t reach that far. We never received any income other than his few dollars for the lease.

I attended Orcutt Union Elementary School from the second